


Decaying memories

by Ischa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Future Fic, Gen, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ischa/pseuds/Ischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean lives a mostly quiet life surrounded by woods.<br/><i>He’s out of bed and at the front door in a few seconds. His feet barely touching ground as he runs through the woods. Could be a dog, could be anything, but Dean doesn’t take chances anymore. Nothing ever gets out of here alive.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Decaying memories

**Title:** Decaying memories  
 **Pairing:** Dean gen  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Summary:** In which Dean lives a mostly quiet life surrounded by woods.  
 _He’s out of bed and at the front door in a few seconds. His feet barely touching ground as he runs through the woods. Could be a dog, could be anything, but Dean doesn’t take chances anymore. Nothing ever gets out of here alive._  
 **Warning(s):** disturbing imaginary, no dialogue  
 **Author’s Notes:** Au-ish future fic  
 **Word Count:** 1.327  
 **Beta:** tygermine  
 **Disclaimer:** Don’t know, don’t own, not real

\--+--  
~1~  
More than two years after the fact, Dean still wakes up in the middle of the night and reaches out, only to find Lisa gone. His hand clenches in the cheap sheets and he closes his eyes. Tries to breathe. It’s surprisingly difficult for the first few seconds, minutes. Hours, when he’s honest. He sits up then, takes another breath and gets up in the pitch dark of the house. He pours himself a drink and drains the glass. He doesn’t need to see where the bottle is, he knows every inch of this room, this house. He pours another drink and walks over to the living room. Silence. Nothing else, only his footsteps on the hardwood floor.

~+~  
He wakes up on his couch. He hates falling asleep on the couch. He hits the glass when he sits up and the liquid spills across the floor. Dean watches it and then gets up to get a towel and make some coffee while he’s in the kitchen anyway.  
Days here are dull and he isn’t sure he hates it. He liked the year with Lisa when he thought Sam was dead. It was dull then too.

~+~  
There are still things that go bump in the night. A lot of different freaky things. And Dean still hunts them when they come to close to his, well, territory would be the right word here. Other than that, he’s done with hunting. For good.  
He polishes his favourite knife, puts it under his pillow and switches off the lights.

 

~2~  
Dean doesn’t dream anymore or he doesn’t remember and it’s a blessing. He can remember the dreams he used to have about hell – from hell. Not knowing what he dreams about is preferable. Every day of the year.  
The insomnia not so much.

~+~  
Dean can hunt anything and everything. His instincts are sharper than ever, he thinks sometimes when he’s sitting on the porch, listening to the noises the night makes, the forest close by.  
He doesn’t think there is anything stupid enough to lurk around in this forest. Or even in the city close by or the state if he’s honest – and he is more than he was before.  
Sammy would be so proud: Dean in touch with his feelings. It nearly makes him laugh and then choke on his whisky. He puts the glass beside him and his head in his hands.  
Even the forest is silent now. The only sound his breathing. Too loud. The only thing he can focus on, concentrate on. It freaks him out at times.  
It makes him want to just stop breathing.

~+~  
He doesn’t stop breathing. He is not suicidal. Most of the time he’s not. Maybe because most of the time he is drunk – not that anyone would know or care.  
He’s an alcoholic. Like his dad was. He can admit it to himself – after all there is no one else.  
Dean never thought he would become like John, but here he is. The only difference is that Dean never had kids. Never wanted any of his own. The Winchesters are cursed, and maybe the Campbells are too. It doesn’t really matter.  
No one should wish something like that (this life he had) on a kid. If he could still get angry, he would be angry right now, but he can’t. It takes too much effort.

 

~3~  
It’s the rain against his bedroom window that wakes him. He reaches over blindly without thinking about it and finds the other side of the bed empty. Of course. Nothing here except ghosts.  
A branch hits the glass and Dean gets up. He can’t sleep through a storm. His footsteps make soft sounds on the floor on his way to the kitchen.  
The house feels like a living breathing thing on nights like this and he feels like he doesn’t belong here. Like he’s the dead one when in reality it’s…  
He makes coffee and sits down at the kitchen table. Just waiting the storm out. It will pass like every storm, like everything.

~+~  
He wakes with a crick in his neck and a nearly empty cup of cold coffee, to sunshine outside his window. The back garden looks like a giant played in it. He stretches and massages his tense muscles. Blinks a few times against the light and then stands up. Takes the mug with him, puts it in the sink, makes fresh coffee. Routine. Things he’s done a thousand times since he’s come here.  
The mug makes a soft sound when he places it on the counter. It sounds hollow somehow and too loud, like it wasn’t…he can’t explain it to himself, so he doesn’t even try.

~+~  
The things he doesn’t remember aren’t the dreams. He doesn’t remember because he doesn’t dream. He doesn’t dream because he doesn’t sleep.  
It’s easy to ignore everything.

 

~4~  
He paints, sometimes. Mostly in shades of red and dark brown. Sometimes with a bit of black. Shadowy wings on faceless figures. He doesn’t think about it too much, he doesn’t need to. He knows what the shadowy wings are all about.

~+~  
He wakes with a start: alert and ready to fight, to kill. Like he always is. He takes out the knife from under his pillow and sits up. The night is silent. Not even a breeze. His shallow breathing the only noise for a few minutes and then something howls in the distance, and then suddenly closer.  
He’s out of bed and at the front door in a few seconds. His feet barely touching ground as he runs through the woods. Could be a dog, could be anything, but Dean doesn’t take chances anymore. Nothing ever gets out of here alive.

~+~  
He takes a hot shower when he’s back. Mud, small branches, and leaves going down the drain. Blood too. Some of it his. Shallow cuts, nothing serious. He doesn’t take any chances. The things that are stupid enough to come here and disturb him are the ones taking chances.  
It’s really not his fault. You might think the things that go bump in the night would’ve learned by now not to mess with Dean Winchester.

~5~  
Sometimes he wakes with blood on his lips, his mouth tasting metallic. Sharp and unpleasant.  
Sometimes with blood on his shirt too. He chooses to ignore it.  
Dean doesn’t know if self harm ever ran in his family, but a tendency to self-sacrificing – that could count as self harm any day of the week.  
They are broken. Always were. It’s in the blood.

~+~  
Routine keeps people sane, or so he heard. On some nights, days, he doesn’t even know what that word means. He knows what it means for other people, but he doesn’t know what it means for himself.  
He has a back garden full of bodies. Salted and burned. Buried alive under a ton of cement.  
He has bones where other people have flowers. He has coffins where other people have roots. He has rotting flesh where other people have seeds.  
He lets his gaze linger on the one big tree in the back, near the fence, just where the wild forest begins, just for a second and then he turns around and begins to prepare dinner.

~+~  
Life here is dull and mostly uneventful. He likes it. It is true what people say: you can’t outrun your past. It always catches up with you.  
But Dean doesn’t try anymore. He doesn’t need to. His past is dead. Dead and buried under the big tree in the back of the garden.  
He buried the last piece of it earlier tonight. The earth is still disturbed from the grave he dug out under the watchful eye of the moon.  
Bobby should have known, he thinks as he stirs his spaghetti sauce. After all, not even Sam was a match for him.

~end~


End file.
